Monitoring of track geometry and location of rail defects
Railway tracks are permanently subject to numerous constraints, which can be weather conditions, the stability of the ground or wear and tear linked to their use.
The monitoring of “track geometry”, i.e. rail deformations, is therefore a major challenge for both infrastructure managers and network operators. It is in fact a question of guaranteeing smooth running on the track, not only for passenger comfort but also – and above all! – for safety reasons.
A challenge: to overcome the incompatible triangle of “cost – exhaustiveness – immediacy”
Currently, this rail track geometry monitoring is mainly carried out by inspection rounds, which can be visual and/or done with instruments. These rounds are costly, both in terms of time and equipment, especially as it is sometimes necessary to immobilize all or part of the rail traffic.
Detecting defects is therefore limited. Firstly, because the prohibitive cost of the rounds means that only certain portions of the track are inspected daily; secondly, it is not possible to follow up on the apparition or the development of the deterioration of the defects observed between two inspections.
An idea: take advantage of ordinary journeys to observe and evaluate first-hand the state of the network
Stimio capitalizes on the ordinary rotations of the rolling stock to make it a first-hand witness of the state of the network, by installing non-intrusive instrumentation on several "control" trains and along the track.
The data collected has been used to develop a context-driven HMI and a multi-objective optimization paradigm to compare each track segment and identify the ones which perform poorly – in terms of passenger comfort or maximum speed authorized – with respect to their characteristics.